Ovaltine the Miltank (pictured left): she's spent a giant portion of her life on Tao Ranch... or at least, as much of it as she can remember. She's siblings with Malt, the brown Miltank. She has a bit of a temper but works hard to help produce milk and helps Iceburg and Strawberry a lot in the fields when it's needed (which is quite often). She's very close to Iceburg and prefers to spend her free time around him, for whatever reason.

Malt the Miltank (pictured right): he spent a lot of his time as a kid learning to do math and use his father's abacus. Where he could have been helping in the fields, he chose to do paperwork and keeping track of the farm's expenses. He also prefers to be referred to as a boy and gets severely agitated when people enter the shop and go "miss," "ma'am," etc.

Ovaltine's teased Malt quite a lot for not helping out with production like most Miltank. As of Mission 2 it had caused a lot of strain on their relationship that he spent most of his time indoors instead of putting his strength to good use.

edit: For those who can't read, Malt identifies as a male regardless of whatever its actual sex may be.

Adorable picture, yet I'm curious.. In this version of the pokeverse, do the Miltanks buff and file their horns normally, and thus Malt lets his grow out? I dunno why, but that just seemed liked an interesting way to aid in his appearance.

I don't get why it's either completely confusing or horrifying/offending people in the comments. I think this is a fantastic idea and it was...I guess the word would be 'subtle'. Like it's not being made to be a big deal or shoved down anyone's throat- that's one thing I liked about it, it's just made out to be as normal as it should be accepted as. There's nothing wrong with it like people are making it out to be.

It's nothing really weird or not-lighthearted though. Just like one of my characters "isn't affected by Attract the same way as others", it's just who they are and it makes them a more interesting character. I mean it's not like this sort of thing doesn't happen in the real world (although there is a line on how much realism we really want here.) I know a few people have raised some concern of it being "inappropriate", but both I and a lot of others including the people running it agree it shouldn't be, even for children and such which Pokémon is primarily aimed at (which this group isn't for; dA has an age limit of 13+). I mean it's not like we're getting sexual or something agreeably adult, just dealing with personal aspects everyone deals with.Different opinions will be different though. I'm not a "Conservative Christian" so maybe your views differ.

I would not want a stranger explaining to youngsters the ins-and-outs of "gender identity" without their parent's consent. Thus it is something that I don't think is child-friendly--and while I realize dA is far from being a site in which children are running around frequently (as you said, they aren't meant to be here), it still means it doesn't fit into the more innocuous pokemon world that I grew up with, and thus I don't like seeing it. There's a difference between, say, James putting on a dress and running around like an idiot in the show and characters that are meant to be serious transgenders.

But whatever. I've already realized that the fandom pokemon universe is going to go places a lot more risky then the actual canon does, and the fact that I dislike it isn't going to make you or the artists change your minds. But just as you can find nothing wrong with it, I can say that I find it questionable. Cheers!

Their parents' consent?! What is so complex and inherently adult about "he's a girl but would like to be a boy"?

Do note that projects like this crop up, in part, because Pokémon canon is ultimately kind of boring. Few characters are important long enough to have real personalities, and when they do they're usually just archetypes at best. The people who grew up with Pokémon are trying to grow Pokémon up with them.

Because there is a difference between a grumpy little girl wishing she was a boy and an adult woman having to pretend she's a man in order to be happy with her life.Also it'd be "she's a girl but would like to be a boy." If it was a he, he would already be what he wanted to be.

But the comments section of someone else's artwork isn't really the place for this conversation. I made one small comment of unease, it'd be cool if everyone'd stop turning it into a super-long comment string. x)

Here's a question no one has asked:If the comments section is a bad place to be discussing this, why did you put it in the comments section in the first place; not to mention, why are you concerned about little nine year olds asking questions about transgender when this is a place with an age limit of 13+?

"Kinda weirded out by the insertion of transgender themes into something as lighthearted and silly as pokemon, but the art is adorable."

ONE LINE. OH GEEZ. CLEARLY I STARTED A GIANT INAPPROPRIATE DISCUSSION ON SOMEONE ELSE'S DEVIATION.Lol, no. I made a very short and fairly innocent statement which was quite fine being there and everyone jumped on it. It was when other people started responding to it that it became a discussion. :T